Toronto Forma | 308m | 84s | Great Gulf | Gehry Partners

junctionist said:
If I saw the Anderson Building in a German or Dutch city, I'd still think it's a great building that's an asset to that city's stock of buildings.
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In a German or Dutch city, this bldg. would sit beside many of the same stock....here, this one looks out of place from what's next door,
Id say, dismantle it and shove it somewhere else in the city where it may look like it belongs

 
junctionist said:
David Mirvish is proposing great things here. He has the ambition and resources to make this project a reality--one that will enhance the vitality of the downtown core and raise the city's architectural profile. I'd like to see it go ahead, but the heritage issues need to be addressed. These are heritage buildings that would be worth preserving in any city. If I saw the Anderson Building in a German or Dutch city, I'd still think it's a great building that's an asset to that city's stock of buildings. If the heritage issues are not addressed, then I could care less if the project fails. It's just a waste of everybody's time to try to ignore these issues. Mirvish wants to see how much he can get away with. It's important that the city keeps strong in its position for the sake of its laws and policies.
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I can appreciate this position but if you take it to its logical extreme, it would mean that the Royal York Hotel, TD Centre, City Hall and many other iconic Toronto buildings, which are now themselves a part of our heritage, never get built.

Likewise, 100 years from now, I feel like these Gehry masterpieces would be far more valued and revered pieces of Toronto heritage than these, then 200 year-old, warehouses would be. If built as proposed, they'll be uttered in the same breath as the buildings I mentioned above, whereas these warehouses never will. I make this trade every time, without question.
 
greenleaf said:
As part of a compromise, what if Vaughan/the committee proposes to de-list some of the heritage buildings so as not to set precedent?

Has this ever been done? (Is there precedent for that?) And if it is done, what would be the appropriate amount of trade off in s37 $?

If it is done, I would gather a City of Toronto Museum would be an appropriate trade off (including an agreement for providing operating/staffing funds).

Any other thoughts?
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When it comes to de-*listing*: redundant, as there've been many listed properties that've been demolished (and not just facadomized: *demolished*) over the years.

De-*designation* is a more complicated matter; however, there've also been designated properties lost over the years, and I believe some form of de-designation (perhaps, sometimes, as pro forma "posthumous" gestures) has been practiced on such occasions...
 
freshcutgrass said:
Again...no one is suggesting any heritage laws be weak....only that they use good judgement wielding them.

I am not the least baffled. In fact, it fits the Toronto narrative pretty accurately. If there were a mayoral election today, one third of this city would vote for Rob Ford.
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Does equating "overzealous" heritage activists with Ford Nation count as a kind of urban Godwin?

[Edit: mea culpa, *I've* made a similar equation in the past--though more subtly, i.e. framing it in 2010-election terms of the pre-existing having a warm'n'fuzzy Ford-ian universality, versus the perceived cold, offputting, Smitherman-style elitist arrogance of Mirvish/Gehry. Yes, that's a strategic "pro-Ford" statement of sorts--but hey, if you want to crack that electoral riddle, you have to get to the heart of certain subtler things without resorting to caricaturing thy enemy...)
 
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Until anything is announced, maybe we should just make a card where you just put an 'X' beside the appropriate point.

e.g.
Part 1 - Frank Gehry

I believe Frank Gehry is a great architect because:
a) Initially, he pioneered a west-coast vernacular form of deconstructivism.
b) He deconstructed a west-coast piece of vernacular to form pioneers.
c) He brought outmoded practices of modernism into the computer age.
d) He is extremely famous and his buildings bring prestige.
e) Anyone who can get from Beverly Street to California is doing something right.
f) Other (explain)_____________________________________________

I regard these three buildings as being representative of his middle career:
a) Parc Villette, Paris; House II; Guggenheim Bilbao
b) Morty and Rachael Frites Doree; The Concord Pavilion; The Chiat/Day Building
c) Vitra Design Pavilion; The Esperanto Treasury; Guggenheim Bilbao
d) Delbert Botts Kunsthalle; Olympic Fish; Guggenheim Bilbao
e) Dancing House; Der Neue Zollhof; Guggenheim Bilbao
f) Other (explain)______________________________________________


I no longer consider Frank Gehry to still be a formal deconstructivist because:
a) His buildings actually stand up.
b) The philosophy that informed it was a bastardization of European continental philosophy to begin with, and could not be translated to North America without becoming specious.
c) He doesn't look like one of those bald pointy-headed french intellectual types.
d) I've yet to hear him relate standardized tropes of architectural reference to the self-contradictory "evidence" of "authorship" "in" a "meaningful" "text".
e) Wasn't that, like, so '80's?
f) Other (explain or disambiguate)_____________________________________________________________________

Any Frank Gehry Building should not be burdened by context because:
a) The world of simulacra referenced by neo-modernism in architecture should be stateless and internationalist as befits the age of instanaeity, as with moderism itself.
b) No great architect should have to compromise their vision to the lesser creations of the past.
c) The purity of modernism was sterile in it's infancy, the mature purity of Gehry's neo-modernism is rich, pluralistic and bountiful.
d) It could be an awkward fit.
e) He's an old man.
f) Other (explain)___________________________________________________________

My favoured argument to reason for the demolition or removal of the existing buildings on the site is:
a) David Mirvish owns them, so he should get to do what he wants with them.
b) Technology is the abstract, collective intelligence of our age made manifest. The technocratic advancement of human help and progress cannot proceed unencumbered containing the bones of the past.
c) Heritage Fronts. That does not sound good.
d) In six thousand years when Toronto is a real city, people will look at these towers and say "Here's where it finally happened".
e) It's complicated (explain)____________________________________________________

etc.
 
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De-*designation* is a more complicated matter; however, there've also been designated properties lost over the years, and I believe some form of de-designation (perhaps, sometimes, as pro forma "posthumous" gestures) has been practiced on such occasions...
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It's as redundant as "de-listing". Issuing a demolition permit is all it takes to demolish a building. If you happen to have a "list" this building is on, it would make sense to remove it from the list, as it no longer exists.


Does equating "overzealous" heritage activists with Ford Nation count as a kind of urban Godwin?
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If it suits your argument, I suppose you can claim anything. But in both cases we are talking about Toronto, we are talking about the present, and we are talking about poor collective judgement from both City Hall and the citizens of Toronto. So I'd say that for at least the near future, they are closely related.
 
I swear I haven't seen a thread this gnarled since Robert A.M. Stern threatened the very walls and foundations of Toronto with One St. Thomas. All those zeroes and ones are still out there somewhere, using up an entire dead dinosaur to maintain it's existence in some poor, constipated server.

Nothing anyone says on here is going to make a bit of difference to those wielding real power around this project. There might be ways to form some byside influence, but typing on here is the most unlikely way.

This hardly feels like a thread about architecture anymore, it's become so insubstantial. I can only hope Mirvish or Gehry hits the right button when they fire the photon torpedoes, or all heck's going to type loose.
 
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freshcutgrass said:
It's as redundant as "de-listing". Issuing a demolition permit is all it takes to demolish a building. If you happen to have a "list" this building is on, it would make sense to remove it from the list, as it no longer exists.
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Actually, "officially" listed buildings tend to remain listed even post-demolition--as a document of their having been listed in the first place. Which is fair and proper.
 
freshcutgrass said:
What you are proposing, whether you realize it or not, is that once something is built, it can never be demolished and replaced. Which is a silly notion. A lot of our favorite heritage buildings replaced even older buildings.

And I only wish we preserved only the significant.
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That is a completely generalizing notion, which you seem to be a fan of. What I am focusing on is on areas like this area of Adelaide, King West and Cabbagetown which contain examples of fairly well-preserved instances of architecture that are no longer possible to replicate.

Ramako said:
I can appreciate this position but if you take it to its logical extreme, it would mean that the Royal York Hotel, TD Centre, City Hall and many other iconic Toronto buildings, which are now themselves a part of our heritage, never get built.

Likewise, 100 years from now, I feel like these Gehry masterpieces would be far more valued and revered pieces of Toronto heritage than these, then 200 year-old, warehouses would be. If built as proposed, they'll be uttered in the same breath as the buildings I mentioned above, whereas these warehouses never will. I make this trade every time, without question.
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This argument is moot because these iconic buildings have already been built. They exist.

These buildings also represent a line of modernist thinking that is around 30-40 years out of date. That was the era when modernist thinking thought that the new could solve any problems and that the old had nothing to offer, which was clearly not true (and in many instances, dehumanized and made the the problems worse). I would like Mirvish-Gehry to avoid this line of thinking.

The Royal York and other buildings of its era up to the 50s are not arguments because they're in a completely different era which did not completely embrace these modernist concepts (the 1920s still carried over many traditional methods of construction and ornamentation).
 
jje1000 said:
This argument is moot because these iconic buildings have already been built. They exist.
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How is it moot? My entire point is that they do, indeed, exist.

Listen, if it's possible to retain these buildings or their facades in some incarnation, here or on another site, then I'd be all for it, but ultimately I'd be absolutely willing to sacrifice them outright to build these Gehry towers.

jje1000 said:
These buildings also represent a line of modernist thinking that is around 30-40 years out of date. That was the era when modernist thinking thought that the new could solve any problems and that the old had nothing to offer, which was clearly not true (and in many instances, dehumanized and made the the problems worse). I would like Mirvish-Gehry to avoid this line of thinking.

The Royal York and other buildings of its era up to the 50s are not arguments because they're in a completely different era which did not completely embrace these modernist concepts (the 1920s still carried over many traditional methods of construction and ornamentation).
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How is the Royal York not a valid example? The 80+ year old Queen's Hotel was razed to build the Royal York. Old buildings got demolished in every era.
 
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